Warautumn (25 page)

A cacophony of shouts rattled the air, mostly “Avall” and “beast” rendered in varying degrees of panic at varying pitches.

And then came the lightning.

A pure white bolt of it rode down from that cloudless early-morning sky to strike the waters beyond the bottom of the raft—which was now rather more like a wall.

The air shattered with thunder. Steam hissed. Vapor fled hot past Avall’s face. The stench of lightning bittered the breeze, mingled with the crisp scent of burning meat. Then silence, followed hard by a long, thin blubbering scream that no human throat could have uttered.

Riff was the first to regain composure, the first to scramble toward the part of the raft that rose highest above the water. The first to bring his weight to bear (and he was heaviest of the crew by a bit), and the first to extend an arm to Lykkon, who was nearest (though lodged atop a jumble of boxes beside the mast). Somehow their hands met, and Riff jerked Lykkon up toward him. The raft promptly shifted far enough toward level for Myx and Rann to make up the difference.

“Is it—?” Bingg dared, as he untangled himself from Avall, atop whom he had fallen.

Riff scanned the waters on his side, then turned and nodded. “It is. It’s floating out there—in two pieces. But what—?”

“Merry—and the Lightning Sword,” Avall replied, heaving himself to his feet, hands questing for his dagger, the distance lens, and his oar all at once.

Bingg had reclaimed the lens, however, and was scanning the shore intently.

“What’s she doing?” Avall called, as he settled on the oar and set it in the water once more. They had drifted, he noted—but fortunately the line of that drift was shoreward.

“She’s trying to get down,” Bingg yelled back. “But she
can’t. The vine’s too short and the ledge is too steep, or she can’t find handholds, or something. I think she’s—yes—she’s going back inside the cliff. She waved, and made a ‘wait’ sign, but she’s gone.”

Gone
.

Avall felt the word like a weight of despair.

“She’ll be back,” Bingg vowed with conviction. “She has to. We just have to be patient.”

“We have to make landfall,” Avall countered. “We have to get up there.”

“We can’t—not there,” Rann told him flatly. “There’s simply no anchorage.”

“Then we’ll have to find one!” Avall snapped.

“We can wait,” Riff put in firmly. “If we have to, we can make a circle of this place and find a way up top. If Merryn’s inside the cliffs, she has to have entered somewhere.”

“She looked as surprised as we did,” Bingg added. “And as glad to see us.”

“She wouldn’t have left without good reason,” Avall conceded, somewhat more calmly. “Probably to find some way to get down.”

“Or us up.”

“She’s surely got rope somewhere,” Rann agreed.

“So what do we do?” Kylin asked the group in general: the first time he had spoken.

“Try to hold position,” Avall sighed. “And wait.”

Holding position proved more difficult than expected, but in the end, they managed, though more than one set of eyes swept anxiously across the lake in search of anomalous shadows.

Happily none were forthcoming, but most of a hand still elapsed in an agony of waiting before Merryn returned—with three companions in tow. Strynn was with her—as was Div and a worn-looking man they didn’t recognize. “Strynn looks
bad,” Rann muttered, as he lowered the lens they all were sharing now.

“Just be glad she looks,” Avall shot back, then glanced up at the cliffs again. Merryn was maybe a quarter shot above them, which was a lot of rope. Most likely, she would have to find a second landing and throw from there. Or a third.

The latter proved to be the case. Merryn managed to find sufficient handholds in the vines to work her way to where a wider ledge jutted out a good eight spans lower than her initial perch: a ledge from which more vines depended. Div followed, while Strynn and the stranger remained behind: more proof that at least one of them was ailing.

Once on the ledge, Merryn reached up to receive a heavy coil of rope that Strynn and the man were lowering from the cleft, using what looked like torn-up strips of a Warcraft cloak to constitute the line. Once she’d freed it, Merryn secured the rope to a stump and tossed the remainder down to the raft. Avall watched it uncoil, fascinated, praying it was long enough to reach them. Unfortunately, it came up a span and a half short.

There followed the most frustrating morning Avall had ever spent, with both his wife and beloved sister so near and yet so far, and their presence all but proof that at least one of their quests had succeeded, and every breath bringing them closer. But there was no time for casual greetings as they called directions and encouragements to each other and tried to finesse the raft into a position from which someone could make up the difference between cliff wall and lake, while Merryn made her way down to a precarious perch a scant two spans above the water’s edge.

And then the raft was bobbing within reach of the cliff, and Bingg was stretching as far up and overboard as he dared, fingers questing for Merryn’s, which she in turn stretched down toward him one-handed, while the other hand held the rope and both feet anchored her at an angle from the cliff.

But Bingg was not quite tall enough to make contact, and the raft was proving unwieldy in the sudden wind that had kicked up and was raising waves that now threatened to suck them away from their goal, now to dash them into it.

And then one of those waves spun the raft a quarter turn around, which put Avall on the shoreward side. And while Rann jabbed frantically with his oar to keep the rock away, Avall reached out and—with his extra height an advantage—managed to clasp Merryn’s fingers.

Power surged through him—or joy so strong it was effectively the same. And then Merryn was pulling, drawing him to shore, while Rann shifted over to seize Avall, and Bingg worked his way between them to tie one of their makeshift ropes to the end of Merryn’s while Myx and Lykkon secured the other end around the decking near the mast.

All of which brought the raft even closer to the cliffs, where Bingg was finally able to loop the rope around a finger of stone that looked like it would hold the raft securely and keep it relatively stable.

“Should I come down?” Merryn called.

Avall thought for a moment, then shook his head. “We were already trying to get to shore. We’ll come up. But what—?”

“Later,” Merryn and Rann chorused as one, though both Rann and Div (who had claimed the next ledge up the rock face) were having a hard time keeping their eyes off each other.

“Right,” Avall agreed regretfully, gazing around to where his crewmates were already untying loads in anticipation of landfall.

Riff however, looked troubled. “If we’re not careful, we may lose the raft,” he warned. “A little care now could save a lot of grief in the long run. I’d suggest we off-load the most irreplaceable items regardless, then try to stabilize the raft as best we can.”

“Actually,” Rann mused, stroking his chin, “if we tied it off a little better, the lot of us might be able to hoist it as far as that ledge Merry’s on.”

“Sounds as good as anything we’re likely to come up with in a hurry,” Avall agreed. And with that, he slung a pack onto his back, grabbed the nearest length of rope, and with Merryn’s assistance, struggled ashore. Thanks to the near-vertical slope, he had to climb hand over hand, and it was touch-and-go at times, yet before he knew it, he had reached the second ledge, where Div awaited. There was no time for reunion in either place, however, merely a pause to tie his burden to the fabric rope Strynn and the stranger commanded, and watch them heave it up to where that third group of allies waited.

By which time Bingg was clambering up the rope and Lykkon was getting ready. Only then did they realize that Kylin might be a problem. For, blind as he was, and no stronger than Bingg for all he was larger, he might have trouble climbing—yet the trek was too perilous for him to assay unassisted. Kylin, however, disagreed vehemently—and amazed them all by shinnying up the lower rope with uncanny ease, only slipping once, right at the end.

Riff—as nominal captain—was the last to come ashore, and that only after he had checked the knots that bound rope to raft four times. That accomplished, they set their backs and arms to it and heaved from Merryn’s perch. The raft rose, if slowly and awkwardly, for it was heavy, and they were all tired from their morning’s exertions. In the end, they only managed to raise it half its own width above the water, where, fortunately, a pair of rocky knobs provided rests atop which it could lodge—which, with the slight slope, provided minimal security at least. Not that Riff didn’t risk a potentially deadly fall securing the corners to a few stray roots, scraggly trees, and sturdy vines.

Bingg, who was the lightest, made one final trip down to
confirm that the remaining supplies were securely lashed to the deck, and then he, too, joined his fellows on land.

And then the rope was coiled again, and Strynn was pulling it upward, and the rest of them were climbing the vines—which proved far easier than the rope had been.

By unspoken agreement Avall went first, and so was first to scramble over the upper edge and find himself suddenly in Strynn’s arms—and utterly at a loss for words because of it.

It was as though she read his mind—which perhaps she did. “We’ve basically succeeded,” she told him tersely, obviously holding back what, if his own heart was any guide, was a flood of emotions, all of which distilled down to the look in her eyes: joyful, yet grave and troubled. “I’ve got a cold, but I’ll survive, and Krynneth’s … not himself, but improving.”

It took Avall a moment to absorb even that much information, and another to peer through the rough-cut hair and sunken features in search of the Krynneth he had known. The man looked awful—clearly something terrible had befallen him, and perhaps the rest of them as well. But he was also grinning and thrusting out his arms for an embrace Avall was not slow in granting, awkward as it was in the narrow tunnel in which they had found themselves.
“Avall!”
Krynneth crowed, in an oddly childlike tone. “Avall. Avall. Avall.”

“That’s me,” Avall murmured, gently prying Krynneth’s arms away, while his gaze sought Strynn’s anxiously. “Come, Kryn,” he continued, we have to get out of the way. There’re other people—”

The next few moments were another study in chaos, as the tunnel proved barely more than one-person wide, even without packs to consider, which resulted in Avall and Strynn being at the head of a line that was pushed farther and farther into the unknown of the cliff face.

And then they were twisting around a corner and then another, and morning light became no light became firelight
again, as they found themselves entering a large chamber lit by three small torches.

But the chamber was not empty.

The messily dead corpse of a very large male geen lay against one wall, with a handsome female birkit worrying at one well-muscled haunch. And against the other wall—

Avall had no choice but to leave Strynn and rush toward it, kneeling in the mud as he regarded what might yet save his Kingdom—if he could get it there …

The royal regalia he had sent away what seemed so long ago—though why it was here, he had no idea. Surely this was not the hiding place Merryn had chosen.

Not with a freshly dead geen to guard it.

But he would get no answers now, not with the rest of the crew crowding in to join them. Merryn made her way toward him through the chaos. “Not how I’d thought to meet you, brother,” she chuckled, finally enfolding him in the hearty embrace necessity had delayed for so long, “but I’m beyond glad to see you—thought not here. We’ve got a camp a shot away on the other side. That would be the best place to figure out what in the name of The Entire Eight is going on.”

“Sounds wonderful to me,” Avall agreed, adjusting his pack. “I’ve had enough water for a while—though we’ll need to go back to the island at some point to retrieve some things.”

“All in good time,” Merryn sighed. “For now, we really do need to get back to camp. We left the horses unattended, and as you may have noted, there are geens about—and you know what they like to eat.”

“We’ve known,” Avall replied offhand. “About the geens, I mean. We’ve seen them on the cliffs.”

Merryn nodded absently, then started abruptly, and whirled back around to face him, face hard and intense.
“Them?
There wasn’t just the one?”

Avall shook his head. “I don’t know how many. Several.
Though we haven’t seen them lately. It’s been”—he glanced at Lykkon—“how long?”

Lykkon scowled. “Let’s see, we’ve been here eleven days. We saw them the first morning, and every day after that until the rain—”

“So there could still be some around,” Merryn spat, suddenly all business. “Come on, we have to get back to camp!”

To Avall’s surprise, it was barely four hands past sunrise when they made their way out of a second cleft in the rocks and once more beneath open sky. More surprising, it took a moment to adjust to terrain that, instead of sloping sharply downhill, ran off gradually through woods that would have seemed perfectly ordinary had at least a third of the trees not been of a kind he had never seen before. Lykkon hadn’t either—nor Riff, who was connected, via Shipcraft, to Wood and ought to know. And that difference as much as anything confirmed the fact that they were very far from home indeed.